Shashi Tharoor and Mira Nair's pretend-kisses

It would be an ideal story of kiss and tell, only there is no kiss but a lot of telling. In a recent interview given to a daily, Mira Nair talks about her life, cinema, marriage, and well, some spicy tit-bits about Shashi Tharoor.

It would be an ideal story of kiss and tell, only there is no kiss but a lot of telling.

In a recent interview given to the TOI, Mira Nair talks about her life, cinema, marriage, and well, some spicy tit-bits about Shashi Tharoor.

Talking to the TOI about her journey from her home of eighteen years, Bhubaneshwar to her college in Shimla to Miranda House in Delhi, where she got acquanited with theatre and a life-long fascination with the performing arts started, she mentions the famous Lok Sabha MP and author, Shashi Tharoor.

It turns out that both of these immensely successful individuals in their respective fields, used to do theater together, once upon a time.

According to Shashi Tharoor, it was year 1974, when his theater act with Mira Nair took place.

For Mira Nair, it was the influence of Barry John, the passion for theater and the drive of youth that got her to discover if art could change the world.

Shashi Tharoor and Mira Nair

In a serious interview where Mira Nair gets cheeky about her theater days, she says, "I got seriously involved with theatre where Barry John became a big influence. In all the plays I always got to play the boy's mother while my friend Lillete Dubey got to play the sexy girl. I must mention here that I used to eat onions before my love scenes with Shashi Tharoor because he was so pompous. I also remember playing Cleopatra where I had six slaves in langotis. Today, all those slaves are famous boys including Amitav Ghosh."

Guess all our contemporary artistes have had humble beginnings with theater.

When the satire website @FakingNews commented on this interview on Twitter, Shashi Tharoor tweeted his response, almost immediately.

Faking News' tweet

@FakingNews had tweeted, "Mira Nair says she used to eat onions before kissing Shashi Tharoor... she confused pyaar with pyaaz (sic)"

To this, Tharoor retweeted by adding, "this was 1974: they were pretend-kisses. I had to turn my back to shield her face from the audience so they couldn't see we weren't kissing (sic)"

Shashi Tharoor's tweet

So whatever motive Mira Nair had in her mind before choosing the metaphor, Shashi Tharoor played on cue and responded.

Watch this space for more buzz on this cheeky incident, where there are fake kisses between Mira Nair and Shashi Tharoor.